During the Christmas holiday in 2021, Jack Smith discovered a collection of surgical equipment boxes in the garage of his childhood home near London.

The boxes contained around 80,000 35mm film slides taken by his late grandfather Herbert Smith as he travelled around the world between 1945 and 1987, including to Hong Kong in 1979.

“He passed away in 1987, so I never met [him], and those photos were left in a big box for about 30 years,” Smith, now 28, says.

Those previously hidden photographs, stored in their original yellow Kodachrome I and II boxes, are now seeing the light of day. Smith has launched A Blank Wall, an archival website and photography platform to share his grandfather’s adventures.

From now until May 18, Smith is selling framed copies of five of his grandfather’s Hong Kong photos. Titled “Streets of Neon: Hong Kong 1979”, this collection includes snapshots of the city’s hazy neon signs and sleek vintage cars. This comes after Smith previously released collections of photos from Canada and Japan.